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My company owns a 2012 Chevy Volt. We took delivery the first week in December. It was one of the first ones in New England. We use it as a company car. We've gone a liitle over 1500 miles and only used 20 gallons of gas. The real value in this vehicle is if you can use it mostly on electricity. So if your commute is 40 miles or less round trip (to work let's say) you won't use hardly any gas at all. The estimated cost of electricity to fully charge it is around $1.50 per charge...so that's about $35.00 per month in electricity vs let's say $150-200 in gas.
The fuel economy rating can be confusing to say the least. Here is a breakdown. It's actually around 60 MPG combined (gas and electricity)
1. 93 MPGe for all-electric range, combined city highway. This is expressed as miles per gallon equivalents showing how far the car can drive purely on the amount of electric energy that would be contained in a gallon of gas (33.7kwh)
2. Official full charge time is 4 hours at 240-v. 10 hours at 110v.
3. EV Range is 35 miles officially, GM still says 25 to 50, based on driving style, temperature, and terrain.
4. Extended range charge-sustaining combined city and highway fuel economy is 37 mpg. It is 35 mpg city and 40 mpg highway.
5. Total range is 379 miles, 344 of gas range plus 35 miles electric range.
6. 60 MPG is the official overall combined number (MPGe + MPG) of fuel economy behavior over lifetime of the vehicle. It would be 93 if driving purely electric and 37 if you only drove using gas.
I agree, the purchase price (Base $39,000 with a $7500 tax credit) and the electric range (38-40 Miles) needs to be better for it to be more attractive to the masses. Also, since everything in the car runs on electricity (even AC), you become very aware of your driving style (accelerating and braking) and turning things on...since it all effects your battery life. It does have regererative brakes but I don't thing that helps all that much. It's so quiet that it is has a "chirp" feature to warn pedestrians at intersections..haha. The battery (they say...) is warranteed up to 100k miles. Chevy would not even quote the replacement cost at this time. All in all it's a really a cool vehicle with tons of gizmos and gadgets...but it should be... it only cost us 2.4 billion in federal subsidies to fund the development but I'm not going there...haha.
If anyone wants more info give me a shout.
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Hybrid Mode
